Japan

Learn about the Japanese supernatural creature Amabie and create an amulet with her image.

Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Jeff Byers, tells a story about a monk and a samurai in the Asian Art Museum’s Japan galleries.

Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Leta Bushyhead, tells a new year story about Jizo, a deity whose statues are a common sight throughout Japan, especially by roadsides. Traditionally, he is seen as the guardian of children.

An introduction to Shinto, one of Japan’s earliest belief systems.

Learn more about the famous samurai story, the “Tale of the Heike” and hear Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Leta Bushyhead, tell an excerpt from the tale. This video include artworks from the Asian Art Museum’s collection.

Japanese artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV pushes the boundaries of bamboo art. He dramatically breaks the scale that we expect of the medium with soaring, twisting forms that stretch from floor to ceiling. His dramatic, immersive environments evoke the bamboo forests where these works began their lives.

Ogawa Machiko’s artistic connection to raw natural beauty is linked to her time living abroad with her anthropologist husband as well as to the seaside landscape of her hometown of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido. “It is my passion for the earth that drives my continual search for the essential in art. The vessel form, with both interior and exterior space, enables me to best pursue this quest — it is not about making vases. Rather, I am inspired by the concept of emptiness within the whole.”
* Ogawa studied ceramics with three Living National Treasures in Tokyo and at the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Paris, then continued her studies in Burkina Faso in West Africa and in South America

Discover how two artists seeking a new direction for modern art in the aftermath of World War II found inspiration in Japanese tradition. Trace the friendship, work, ideas and mutual influence of Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa, who both sought to balance tradition and modernity, Japanese culture and foreign influences, past and present.

Use animal templates to make a mix and match game where you create new mythical creatures.